You have a point Sylvie! I have a BlackBerry-like phone which I use for emails on the go. I dread typing emails on touch-screen smartphone so there is a market for business users.
BlackBerry also did not play its cards right with some of the controversies on sharing access to its mail servers in situations of crime, terrorism, etc -in India it was an unnecessary negative publicity for RIM. I hope they have matured from that lesson.
I do think RIM will survive, perhaps more in Asian markets than in western ones.
MP Divakar

RIM didn't invent anything! Microsoft pretty much left the door open for RIM to go in and ate the lunch since many years ago. As of today, I still cannot understand why enterprises were willing to pay additional license fees per handset and for an additional BB Server given that most enterprises already had the Exchange Server installed. I was told that the end-to-end security was the critical deciding factor. If so, this is probably too over-rated.
RIM is pretty much gone. In enterprises, the tide has turned to iOS and perhaps the up & coming Win8 eco-system. At the end of the day, no market force can ever be stronger than bad management! WeiLi Dai is another over-rated manager. As an avid consumer, I will simply ignore her statement because it was spoken with the interest of Marvell in mind, but not those of the consumers. As a technologist, I will just give her statement a laugh because the undo of RIM was long started!

The fact that you invent something doesn't guarantee that you will be around when other pass you by...yes, RIM has strong security technology so it will not disappear...but it will not be a market leader again either

no, the fact that it STILL "too early" means BB is already WAY too late to the game and therefore HAS LOST. The first round is over, they have forfeited and now watch from the stands while the big players play round 3

When RIM can offer me an Android-powered phone with 5.3" display for just $29.95, then I believe that they are viable. Until then, thank you AT&T for selling me a Samsung Galaxy Note for just $29.95 on Black Friday.

I think RIM is just limited to enterprise use and people just use it for emails. However, with how bad is other smartphones performing? I don't see any comparison between different push mail services from other OS/smartphones. If there is no obvious advantage on RIM's push mails, why can it still survive in the future? I really doubt if we will see this brand in 2 years.